thought flood

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,

The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.

I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.

Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping

I must most perfectly resemble them--

Thoughts gone dim.

It is more natural to me, lying down.

Then the sky and I are in open conversation,

And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:

Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

― Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems

...I Am Vertical

(But I would rather be horizontal...)

---

The Mystery Of Man

We come from a distant past that we’ve forgotten

And now we look up and aspire to the stars

We are the mystery that even we can’t decipher

The mystery of man

The story is told in stone and broken arrows

In traces of cities unknown lost in sand

In colours and castle walls silent and unseen statues

The mystery of man

The wind stirs in the trees likes voices in dreams

And then just when it seems we know what it means

Simply its gone

The miracle is the mind asking the questions

Seeking to find itself if it can

Only to see itself endlessly echoed in mirrors

The mystery of man.

---

Karol Wojtyla (the late Pope John Paul II)

finding the words

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. 

― Jack Kerouac

The Test

Those who learned to be truly human

found everything in being humble

while those who looked proudly from above

were pushed down the stairs.

A heart that must always feel superior

will one day lose its way.

What should be within leaks out...

A Poem by Yunus Emre (1240-1321)

The Drop that became the Sea, translated by Helminski and Algan (1989)

half light and dusk

[Photograph: T. Estacaan, "Half Light" May 2013]

“Although

the cricket’s song

has no words,

still,

it sounds like sorrow.”

— Ono no Komachi, in The Ink Dark Moon, translated by Jane Hirshfield

Beauty

Photograph: Tarhata Estacaan, "The Real", December 2012

Among the grasses,

An unknown flower

Blooming white.

―Zen Haiku

The Sacred in Everyday Life

Photograph: Tarhata Estacaan "Rustic Kitchen", March 2012

  “Daily”

A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world